Weekend passed...

I'd been told that the Shanghai Museum of Science and Technology has a brilliant display of dinosaur bones ('Dragon Bones'!!), and it is at the end of our nearby bus route, and entry is free. So, last saturday we got up really early (10am) to go and explore.


Unfortunatly, some other people had had the same idea.


And some more...


And some more...


And some more.

So, we decided instead to go in to central Shanghai and visit The Shanghai Museum, full of Chinese historical relics and other goodies.

The Chinese have been minting coins for thousands of years, although some of the early ones aren't quite the shape you might expect...


For hundreds of years they were at the forfront of civisation, technologically and culturally, and possibly made the first circumnavigation of the globe years before Magellan. They certainly got as far as the UK - we found this model of my sister presumably defending the coast against them:


After we finished in the museum, we went for a wanderaround the city. My Chinese friend didn't quite understand my amusement at some of the road signs


We stopped for an afternoon coffee in this indiginous Chinese coffee shop chain not basing its branding on a well known American label:


And treated ourselves to an afternoon tea


(The English reads: "Taking afternoon tea is a unique custom which is said to have started in the early 19th Century". The Chinese calls it Afternoon red tea (they call Western tea red tea), but this was stuffed full of sugar, tasted of apricot, and meant to be drunk cold!)